旁观者清（双语）

THE Obama magic has waned and Washington, to a visitor, is full of people sadly theorising about why it waned so fast and whether it might be retrievable. The president’s address to the nation on Tuesday night about the withdrawal from Iraq had none of the sparkle of the campaign and the early months. His famously inspiring rhetoric seemed almost wooden.
奥巴马的魅力已然衰退，对于一个观察者而言，华盛顿满是难过地探讨关于为什么会衰退得那么快，以及是否能够得以恢复的人们。总统星期二晚关于从伊拉克撤军
的全国演讲已没有了早先竞选时的任何亮点。他著名的鼓舞人心的修辞显得如此僵硬。

Nevertheless, for this still-unjaundiced admirer from afar, there was a flash of that former throat-constricting poignancy when he opened the renewed Israeli-Palestinian talks on Wednesday evening.
然而，当奥巴马在星期三晚宣布重启以巴和谈时，对于外部仍保持客观的仰慕者而言，如同在之前令人哽噎的辛酸中为之眼前一亮。

“The programme will begin in two minutes,” a White house staffer proclaimed before Barack Obama entered with his Mid-Eastern guests to the throng of officials (seated) and journalists (standing squashed round the walls) in the East Room of the White House. And, indeed, the event—a series of speeches from the leaders before they ate the iftar together, breaking the daily fast of Ramadan at sundown—had a staged and stilted air about it.
“会议将于两分钟后开始” ， 当奥巴马和他的中东客人进入白宫东厅里官员（就座）和记者（沿墙壁拥挤站立）的人群中之前，一位白宫职员如此宣布。的确， 该事件----一连串领导人对话，在他们一起吃“开斋饭”（在斋月里每天日落斋戒结束后的进餐）之前已经上演，当然气氛有点不自然。

Still, it was the old Mr Obama (or his old speechwriter) who wove into his remarks a moving reference to this being both the holy month of Ramadan for Muslims and the pre-Rosh Hashana month of Elul for the Jews. “Different faiths, different rituals, but a shared period of devotion—and contemplation. A time to reflect on right and wrong…” Kitsch? Perhaps. Contrived? That, too: Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were equally ecumenical regarding the other monotheistic faiths during their tenures.
尽管如此，这是之前的奥巴马（或者说他之前的撰稿人）组织其评论时惯用的打动人心的对照，既是伊斯兰神圣的斋月也是犹大新年前的以禄月。“不同信仰，不同仪式，却是共同的虔诚之期——默祷之期，一个反省是与非的时刻” “三俗作品”？也许吧。矫揉造作？也可能吧。比尔.克林顿和乔治.W.布什在他们的任期内也同样充当其他宗教信仰的普世价值。

And yet, there seems, still, something especially authentic in Mr Obama’s frequent reaching out to Islam and Judaism. Because of who he is, no doubt, and where he came from, and how genuinely comfortable he seems to be in a multicultural environment.
然而，奥巴马频繁地接触伊斯兰及犹大人却显得格外真诚。这是因为他的身份，毫无疑问，也因为他的出身之地，使其在多元文化环境显得如鱼得水般的舒适。更多信息请访问：http://www.24en.com/

Elsewhere, many of the journalists succumbed to an hour of suffering corralled in the hot sun followed by more long and uncomfortable waiting inside the White House in order to have their own look at Hosni Mubarak and make their own mind up about the Egyptian president"s mortality.
在另一地点，为了亲眼见到胡斯尼.穆巴拉克及在他们的头脑里预计该埃及总统的死亡率，大多数记者苦苦忍受着长达一个小时毒辣的太阳下列队的苦难以及随后更长时间和不舒服的等待。
   
To this inveterate hypochondriac, at any rate, the long-time leader looked pretty good. Thinner, true, and hands shaking a bit. But alert, upright, active. I have a secret theory, developed and tested during the Brezhnev years, that one of the little laughs God likes to have, especially on the massed punditry of mankind, is that whenever the world’s media (inspired by the world’s spooks) decide unanimously to bury someone alive, he gets more months, and even years, added to his divinely ordained expiration date. Fidel Castro has been bearing witness in recent years to this celestial sense of humour. Now Mr Mubarak, widely written off with “only a year to live, if that”, seems to have been handed the Heavenly baton and charged with proving the pundits morbidly wrong.
对于这一长期的忧心仲仲而言，无论如何，长期执政者看起来相当不错。确实是瘦了，双手也稍微有点颤抖，却警觉，挺立，积极。我有一个秘密理论，在勃列日涅夫时期得以发展和验证，那是上帝喜欢开的一个小玩笑，特别是在大量人类权威的意见上，即是每当全球媒体（被世界上的鬼魂所刺激）一致认定某些在世的大人物将要离世时，他却多活了好几个月，甚至是几年，从而延长了神为其设立的截止日期。近年来菲德尔.卡斯特罗已经见证这种天堂的幽默感。现在穆巴拉克先生, 被广泛冠以“至多，只有一年的命”，似乎已经接受天堂的重任以证明专家对其疾病的误读。